James Vollono (ST coordinator)

[ImperialOrange]

I mean, Tony White had a MUCH better-performing D at Cuse, and did it with less overall talent, and far less depth.
Plus with an offense that wasn't the greatest, so the D had to play a LOT of snaps.

Per Sports-Reference.com, here are the season overall D rankings for Syracuse:
2024 96 - ERob

2023 57 - Rocky Long
2022 41 - Tony White
2021 65 - Tony White

xxxx (whatevs - covid)
2019 89 - Steve Stanard (interim)
2018 64 - (fire!) Brian Ward

2017 99
2016 120 !!
2015 90

The orange represent our 2 10-win seasons.
The blue represent our best defensive rankings (along with 2018) using the 3-3-5.

I'd wager we had objectively less 'talent' on the 21, 22, and '23 teams, than the 2024 squad.
And certainly less depth.

So - either ERob needs a LOT more talent, and/or he needs to get a defensive guru like Paul Pasqualoni to assist him.
Because we cannot rely on an insanely prolific O to carry us every season.
And in a DART world, we cannot have a sub-par D for multiple seasons.
The D being ranked in the 90's is just unacceptable. Period.

are these rankings points per game or yardage?

 

[Sudano]

Well yeah. Sometimes you hire someone that has good credentials and it doesn't work out. You can either be stubborn with the hire or admit you were wrong. I'm happy to see Fran can admit he was wrong, are you not?

Again Strawman. I'll answer the way I think you people will need me to.
Fran Brown is great, Fran Brown is great, Fran Brown is great.......repeat a few more times.
Our ST was terrible and the ST coach Vollono was in large part the problem and was hired by Fran Brown.
Fran Brown fired him after the season. The end.

 

[djcon57]

Again Strawman. I'll answer the way I think you people will need me to.
Fran Brown is great, Fran Brown is great, Fran Brown is great....repeat a few more times.
Our ST was terrible and the ST coach Vollono was in large part the problem and was hired by Fran Brown.
Fran Brown fired him after the season. The end.

I don't want you to answer in any way. I just want you to use basic logic.

Yes, Vollono was hired by Fran Brown. It was a bad hire...somehow with Fran Brown's other hires, we went 10-3...so I'll trust Fran Brown to do better with his next hire.

Now what's your point?

 

[Sudano]

I don't want you to answer in any way. I just want you to use basic logic.

Yes, Vollono was hired by Fran Brown. It was a bad hire...somehow with Fran Brown's other hires, we went 10-3...so I'll trust Fran Brown to do better with his next hire.

Now what's your point?

You're making progress...good for you

 

[djcon57]

You're making progress...good for you

So what was the point on your initial response to my comment?

 

[UD1954]

Wasn’t the punt return our base D with Pena back?

I mean, Tony White had a MUCH better-performing D at Cuse, and did it with less overall talent, and far less depth.
Plus with an offense that wasn't the greatest, so the D had to play a LOT of snaps.

Per Sports-Reference.com, here are the season overall D rankings for Syracuse:
2024 96 - ERob

2023 57 - Rocky Long
2022 41 - Tony White
2021 65 - Tony White

xxxx (whatevs - covid)
2019 89 - Steve Stanard (interim)
2018 64 - (fire!) Brian Ward

2017 99
2016 120 !!
2015 90

The orange represent our 2 10-win seasons.
The blue represent our best defensive rankings (along with 2018) using the 3-3-5.

I'd wager we had objectively less 'talent' on the 21, 22, and '23 teams, than the 2024 squad.
And certainly less depth.

So - either ERob needs a LOT more talent, and/or he needs to get a defensive guru like Paul Pasqualoni to assist him.
Because we cannot rely on an insanely prolific O to carry us every season.
And in a DART world, we cannot have a sub-par D for multiple seasons.
The D being ranked in the 90's is just unacceptable. Period.

All l remember is late in the season when we played the physical teams on our schedule (Boston College/Pittsburgh/Louisville our defense was getting overpowered...
or as we got used to saying "0 for November "

 

[tptcuse]

Again Strawman. I'll answer the way I think you people will need me to.
Fran Brown is great, Fran Brown is great, Fran Brown is great....repeat a few more times.
Our ST was terrible and the ST coach Vollono was in large part the problem and was hired by Fran Brown.
Fran Brown fired him after the season. The end.

How is that a strawman? Good bosses sometimes make bad hires. Bad bosses keep the bad hires.

 

[baggerbob]

Eh I didn’t love the gameplan but the bend but don’t break philosophy was a necessary evil with current talent levels

When 4 of your top 8 DL were out before the season started we were in trouble.

 

[AZOrange]

I mean, Tony White had a MUCH better-performing D at Cuse, and did it with less overall talent, and far less depth.
Plus with an offense that wasn't the greatest, so the D had to play a LOT of snaps.

Per Sports-Reference.com, here are the season overall D rankings for Syracuse:
2024 96 - ERob

2023 57 - Rocky Long
2022 41 - Tony White
2021 65 - Tony White

xxxx (whatevs - covid)
2019 89 - Steve Stanard (interim)
2018 64 - (fire!) Brian Ward

2017 99
2016 120 !!
2015 90

The orange represent our 2 10-win seasons.
The blue represent our best defensive rankings (along with 2018) using the 3-3-5.

I'd wager we had objectively less 'talent' on the 21, 22, and '23 teams, than the 2024 squad.
And certainly less depth.

So - either ERob needs a LOT more talent, and/or he needs to get a defensive guru like Paul Pasqualoni to assist him.
Because we cannot rely on an insanely prolific O to carry us every season.
And in a DART world, we cannot have a sub-par D for multiple seasons.
The D being ranked in the 90's is just unacceptable. Period.

You won’t get any argument from me that Tony is a great DC…lol

But I’d be shocked if ERs d was not on the field alot more. They gave up a lot of yards but the whole thing is premised on not giving up big shots over the top. I mean Kyle would go 90 yards in like 2 min…

 

[bnoro]

Again Strawman. I'll answer the way I think you people will need me to.
Fran Brown is great, Fran Brown is great, Fran Brown is great....repeat a few more times.
Our ST was terrible and the ST coach Vollono was in large part the problem and was hired by Fran Brown.
Fran Brown fired him after the season. The end.

This is a really odd take. He is a first time head coach hiring his first support staff.

He's made one (maybe two) poor hires of the 10 staff coaches, and has done a great job with the recruiting/support/qc staffers too.

And he immediately rectified the issue. He made a mistake and fixed it.

 

[AZOrange]

So what happens next year?

Not sure the talent level is going up.

We will see. I think the backend of the D has some good youngsters. I’d like to see a DL that can hold their own…

 

[AZOrange]

This is a really odd take. He is a first time head coach hiring his first support staff.

He's made one (maybe two) poor hires of the 10 staff coaches, and has done a great job with the recruiting/support/qc staffers too.

And he immediately rectified the issue. He made a mistake and fixed it.

Yeah what do people want?

 

[Nick44]

Of all of the prior staff that wasn’t retained, I actually thought Fran should have tried to keep Bob Ligashesky. For a first year HC, this guy had a ton of experience in both college and the NFL, that I think would have helped. Special teams under him were solid, not great. Would have served as a good transition for a future hire. Thought he also had a hand in helping Shmyt return to the player he was his freshman year. Thought this was a mistake by Fran, assuming Bob would have stayed on staff.

 

[Jake]

I have been told he is focused, but not stubborn especially in that he recognizes his mistakes and will fix them. He being Fran.

 

[upperdeck]

first step is to see what went wrong on STs before just going out and getting a coach.

STs stop the blocked kicks and make the tackles
Kickers make the kicks

We had a Punter who has a very slow release compounded by blocking issues

Who controlled who was on the STs though? Did he make all those decisions on who played those spots?

 

[AZOrange]

I have been told he is focused, but not stubborn especially in that he recognizes his mistakes and will fix them. He being Fran.

What about his eggnog throwing skills?

 

[AZOrange]

first step is to see what went wrong on STs before just going out and getting a coach.

STs stop the blocked kicks and make the tackles
Kickers make the kicks

We had a Punter who has a very slow release compounded by blocking issues

Who controlled who was on the STs though? Did he make all those decisions on who played those spots?

I still find it weird we had so many starters on ST

 

[Cusefan69]

I have been told he is focused, but not stubborn especially in that he recognizes his mistakes and will fix them. He being Fran.

It's good to hear, not surprisingly for what you expect from a HC. Would love to know how Fran viewed the defense overall. Gotta believe when Fran and ADJW have the season end meeting they high level walk through each unit?

 

[Sudano]

This is a really odd take. He is a first time head coach hiring his first support staff.

He's made one (maybe two) poor hires of the 10 staff coaches, and has done a great job with the recruiting/support/qc staffers too.

And he immediately rectified the issue. He made a mistake and fixed it.

Again guys, we don't have to play this game, out of all the many good decisions he made a poor decision. It's ok to mention that. All the good he's done for our program doesn't negate or end the need to point out the bad.
It grounds us in reality and not the need to rationalize everything. I suggest we all try it. It's very freeing.

 

[Cheriehoop]

first step is to see what went wrong on STs before just going out and getting a coach.

STs stop the blocked kicks and make the tackles
Kickers make the kicks

We had a Punter who has a very slow release compounded by blocking issues

Who controlled who was on the STs though? Did he make all those decisions on who played those spots?

Didn’t Fran say he was changing things up and wanted to play many starters on ST to give them a better chance to make the NFL? He said having ST experience helped the players make NFL rosters. Could that have been an issue? Did it even happen? It would have been a change and sounded like it was a head down type decision regarding ST.

 

[pokercuse08]

It is only DART to me, if changes also happen to the DC or defensive side of the game.

Conference-only in points per game allowed we were 12/17, sacks 12/17, turnovers T-7/17. I wanted to look this up because I remember a lot of games where a lot of people were ranting about the soft defense, only for us to force a turnover or two later in the game.

In addition, the points per game allowed includes everything, like the four pick-6's in ACC games. That's 3.5 points per game. It doesn't account for super short fields after special teams mishaps. Now that's true for everyone, but we know our ST cost us a lot more than others and probably cost us a couple points per game. I think we had more pick 6's too, so I think it's reasonable to guess that it all added up to 2.5 to 3 points per game.

That's enough to put us right in the cluster of teams from #7 Pitt at 27.4 ppg allowed to #11 FSU at 28.3 ppg allowed, which seems fair to me. If you think that's a reasonable adjustment, we were in the middle of the pack among ACC defenses - just outside the top half in ppg allowed and just int he top half in turnovers. Pretty solid job IMO given this next part...

I mean, Tony White had a MUCH better-performing D at Cuse, and did it with less overall talent, and far less depth.
Plus with an offense that wasn't the greatest, so the D had to play a LOT of snaps.

White was running a 3-3-5, which made sense when we were basically conceding that we could not recruit the level of DL and LB talent/size that we would need to compete with the Clemson's of the world in a 4-3 or 3-4 front (or the nickel variations of these). So you give up size, you add speed on the back end, and you try to create some confusion for the QB. It's the right adjustment IF you can't recruit the combination of talent and size needed.

Fran and ERob are not making that concession. So they switched us to a big boy defense. But we're in the midst of transitioning from not having the requisite size/talent to having it. So it stood to reason that this year there might be some struggles.

This is an area where I do think we need to give them 2-3 years to get their guys in and developed.

 

[PAcuse]

I still find it weird we had so many starters on ST

Fran has stated he wanted them on ST to help with there draft stock etc.

 

[upperdeck]

Losing all the DL guys forced some changes in how we played D for sure.

 

[PhatOrange]

The change in defensive scheme was very drastic. I’d like to see what happens next season with a full year and half and two springs under the belt before the 2nd season begins.

Many of the mistakes I saw in the secondary were guys not on the same page or not understanding their responsibilities; dumbing it down, there were times half the guys were in zone and the other half in man. Or a CB passing a guy off when there’s no safety help behind him because the safety is moving to The other side of the field. Lots of miscommunication and mixups. There’s a lot more put on the secondary plate than what they were used to with White. (We need a couple of kids to step up at safety, I thought that was a bigger issue than DL even though we obviously need someone to be able to get to the QB.)

Second major problem I saw was fundamental and fixable; tackling and angles.

All in all, the change in scheme was drastic and we need to allow for it to sink in. If ERob came in playing a 335 with these results then I’d be concerned. Not concerned yet.

 

[bnoro]

Again guys, we don't have to play this game, out of all the many good decisions he made a poor decision. It's ok to mention that. All the good he's done for our program doesn't negate or end the need to point out the bad.
It grounds us in reality and not the need to rationalize everything. I suggest we all try it. It's very freeing.

Yeah, criticism is warranted, but what's the point? People make mistakes.

This isn't a three-strikes-and-you're-out situation for Fran. It's just an odd way to call it out.